PHCC training session focuses on improving patient safety

DOHA: The Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) insisted on the importance of adopting advanced global practices in patient safety during a training session held for senior leaders of the organisation, yesterday.

‘Safety-II and Resilient Healthcare- Training for PHCC Senior Leaders’ was opened by Dr Mariam Ali Abdulmalik, Managing Director, PHCC at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Doha. Professor Erik Hollnagel , one of world’s leading experts on industrial safety and an innovator of the Safety-II and Resilient Healthcare was the key speaker at the event.

Traditionally, safety is considered as the absence or reduction in things that go wrong. It is referred as ‘Safety I.’ In the past five years ‘Safety-II and Resilient Healthcare’ were introduced as a revolutionary approach to safety.

‘Safety-II and Resilient Healthcare’ concepts enables patient safety at different level of work to continuously learn and improve. The core idea of it is learning from success.

The one-day training session addressed 28 senior leaders at the PHCC.

“This event is an excellent opportunity to reflect on progress, consider challenges and plan together how we can follow safe practices with the ultimate goal of providing best care,” said Dr Abdulmalik.

“PHCC has already started to learn from safety events and best practices that have proven to be effective with a high impact on safety culture. Now PHCC is striving to equip all its leadership with this innovative approach to safety management and organisational learning,” she added.

The training presented a wealth of knowledge, international experience and practical expertise that has proven to enable safer care globally.

“The PHCC team has identified areas of good practice and areas where they can improve all with the goal of making health services safer for patients,” said Professor Hollnagel.

“The conventional way of safety is that you look at accidents and try to understand the reasons behind and prevent accidents from happening again. But you cannot be safe only by preventing things for long. You also need to make sure that they go well. That’s the basic idea of ‘Safety-II and Resilient Healthcare.’ Look at things that go well at a hospital, try to understand why they go well and look at ways to support, facilitate and improve that,” he added, while speaking to media person on the sidelines of the event.

Safety-II is not limited for healthcare, it is a concept practiced in aviation high-risk industries like oil and gas as well as nuclear power.